Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] And since you do not dare deny that these figures were men, while insisting that after death they were made gods, let us reexamine the reasons that supposedly required this. [2] To begin with, you must concede that there is some higher god, some broker of divinity, who made gods out of men. For they could not have conferred divinity on themselves, since they did not possess it, nor could anyone else have granted it to those who lacked it unless he himself actually owned it. [3] But if there were no one to make gods, then you are assuming, pointlessly, that gods were made, all the while removing the one who would have had to make them. Certainly, if they could have made themselves gods, they would never have been men at all — since that would mean possessing the power of a better condition from the start.
[4] So then, granting that there is someone who makes gods, I return to examining the reasons for making gods out of men, and I can find none — unless that great god needed help and assistance for his divine duties. First, it is beneath him to need anyone's services, least of all a dead man's, since it would have been far more fitting for him to have made some god from the very start who would later provide the service the dead man was going to provide. [5] But I do not even see any job for them to do. This entire body of the world — whether unborn and uncreated, as Pythagoras holds, or born and made, as Plato holds — was, once and for all, in this construction of it, arranged, equipped, and ordered, complete with every mechanism of rational government, right from the start. What perfected everything could not itself have been incomplete. [6] Nothing was waiting around for Saturn and the Saturnian race. Men would be fools not to be certain that from the very beginning rain fell from the sky, stars shone, lights blossomed, thunder rumbled, and Jupiter himself feared the very thunderbolts you put in his hand — likewise that every crop existed in abundance before Liber and Ceres and Minerva, indeed before any first man at all sprang up out of the earth, because nothing needed for man's containment and sustenance could possibly have been supplied only after man existed. [7] In fact these figures are said to have discovered these necessities of life, not to have instituted them. But what is discovered already existed, and what already existed is not credited to the one who discovered it but to the one who instituted it — for it existed before it was discovered. [8] Besides, if Liber is a god because he showed men the vine, then Lucullus got a raw deal, since he was the first to bring cherry trees to Italy from Pontus, and yet he was never made a god as the source of a new fruit — because he only showed it, he did not create it. [9] Therefore, if the universe stood from the very beginning already fully equipped and organized under fixed principles for carrying out its own functions, then this whole line of argument for promoting humanity into divinity collapses — since the offices and powers you distributed to these gods existed from the beginning exactly as they would have existed even if you had never created these gods at all.
[10] But you turn to another argument, answering that the conferral of divinity was really a matter of rewarding merit. And here, I take it, you concede that this deifying god excels in justice, since he would not dispense so great a reward carelessly, undeservedly, or wastefully. [11] I would like, then, to review these merits, and see whether they were of the sort that would have lifted these men into heaven — or rather plunged them into the depths of Tartarus, which you yourselves, when it suits you, describe as the prison of infernal punishments. [12] For that is where the impious are usually thrust down — men who violate their parents, who commit incest with their sisters, who commit adultery with other men's wives, who rape virgins, who molest boys, who rage in cruelty, who kill, who steal, who deceive, and whoever else resembles any one of your gods — and you will not be able to prove a single one of them innocent of crime or vice, unless you deny he was ever a man at all.
[13] And yet, since you cannot deny that these figures were men, further marks now attach to them that will not allow us to believe they were later made gods. If you yourselves sit in judgment to punish such crimes, if every decent person shuns the company, conversation, and companionship of the wicked and the depraved — while your great god of majesty has admitted their exact equals into the fellowship of his own divine rank — then what exactly are you condemning, when you worship their colleagues? [14] Your idea of justice is a standing insult against heaven. Go on, make gods of your worst criminals, so as to please your own gods! It is, apparently, an honor — being consecrated alongside one's equals.
[15] But let me set aside this whole outrageous business and grant that these men really were upright, honest, and good! Even so, how many far greater men have you left down in the underworld! In wisdom, a Socrates; in justice, an Aristides; in generalship, a Themistocles; in grandeur, an Alexander; in good fortune, a Polycrates; in wealth, a Croesus; in eloquence, a Demosthenes. [16] Which of your gods is weightier or wiser than Cato, more just or more soldierly than Scipio? Who is grander than Pompey, luckier than Sulla, wealthier than Crassus, more eloquent than Cicero? How much more fitting it would have been for that god to wait and admit these men instead, since he surely foresaw their superiority! Instead, I suppose, he rushed things, sealed off heaven once and for all, and now sits blushing while his betters mutter away down among the dead.